RW sister's email- pt.2

[ErikJ]

This is the second paragraph from my very conservative sister's very long email. She's a public school teacher too, believe it or not! I'm afraid Fox has turned her brain to mush.
I am going to respond that Reagan was supporting the GOP in the early 50's long before he was Republican CA governor in 67-75. And that the top 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 50%. Any other ideas?

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"Reagan legalized abortion in CA as a democrat, I believe. He was once a dem, not sure where he was at that point but I DO know he did a 180 on his position on abortion and came out squarely against it. Sounds as though all presidents in the past, rep or dem, raised taxes during their tenure. That is such an easy answer/fix, but now the reps are saying NO MORE. We are BROKE! We have to get smarter, wiser and more clever as to fixing what is sorely broken. Yes, LOTS of your and my money has been 100% wasted and thrown down the toilet. That is another reason we are opposed to raising ANYMORE taxes and against nationalized health care. WHO can run an efficient national health care program without exceeding waste, fraud and corruption? NO ONE! Our country is too big -- there is not enough manpower for oversight. It will just run amok. Even in my little school district money gets accidentally wasted. Some government agencies purposely carelessly monitor closely because -- who cares? After all, it's not THEIR money."

[ingac70]

1. Reagan was a Dem until 1962. n/t

[Kali]

2. just delete and go on with your life

(unless there is a long list of recipients you can reply-all to, then it might be worth it to hit the whole list)

[ErikJ]

4. That would be fun

I could send her whole email list her copy and my reply. Hmmm worth some thought.

[riverbendviewgal]

3. There is nothing you can say to have her think differently.

Let it go...Let her go....I realized this when my brother started spouting the words of O'Reilly and Limbaugh...

It breaks my heart...

He and I were close while the rest of the family were very illiterate.. My mother would hang up on a phone call with me if I mentioned Obama

THis brother changed when he changed his nickname from Happy to Bubba after meeting a very right wing football and beer loving chick.

The only family I have now is my son who moved to England...He says USA news is not on the front page and he is happy for that.

I am born American and now a Canadian citizen after coming to Canada in 1969 as a refugee.

No regrets No medical bills either. ..

[mahina]

5. This is a better conversation face to face. Consider what your purpose is.

If it's to change her mind, do you think she could change your mind? With an email?

If it's to argue, knock yourself out.

A recent study showed that facts that don't agree with the reader's preconceived notions are almost always dismissed. I don't recall the study but I think it was in a communications journal. Looked around for a while for it on google and decided to get back to my life. It showed data consistent with what we all kind of know anyway.

The main flaw in her reasoning from my point of view is that liberals mainly agree with her that there has been a lot of unwise spending. We are just able to deal with ambiguity and say yes, there has, and we still know public resources are for the public good. We all benefit from public libraries, public schools, fire departments, etc; these are areas the far right sees as frivolous. If they have their way, only rich people will be educated or have decent housing and education.

Oh wait...

Finally, if your purpose is just to preserve your relationship with integrity, you can always adopt the old peace studies motto: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood".

Good luck with achieving whatever your objective is.

[smoochpooch]

6. "Who can run an efficient national healthcare system without waste?"

"Um, pretty much every country on the planet."

[ErikJ]

7. That's why I'm soon going to be an expat.

Its too medically dangerous to live in the good ole USA anymore.

[SharonAnn]

9. There is always some waste. Even private healthcare has some waste..

Private businesses have waste. Public organizations have waste. Government organizations have waste. Military services have waste.

Even our personal households have waste.

The objective is to keep the waste down to a small enough percentage that it doesn't have a significant negative effect on the business/organization/service/household.

That's the best that can be done. Reality sometimes bites.

[markpkessinger]

8. I have a sister with similar views . . .

. . . After a 2 hour car ride with her a couple of months ago, in which she harangued me with stuff very similar to what your sister has written and tried her level best to convince me that Fox News is the apex of journalistic excellence(and after saying, when I made a reference to something I'd seen on Rachel Maddow, that she didn't think Maddow "has the smarts to be doing that job"), I finally said to her, "Look, we both have very passionate views when it comes to politics, and we each have sources we believe to be reliable and we each believe certain media outlets are unreliable. Unfortunately, the sources you trust or distrust are different from the ones I trust or distrust. So neither of us is going to convince the other of anything here. You are my sister, and I love you, but this is a subject we simply cannot talk about." And even after that, she kept coming back to it -- it was all I could do to keep myself from going off at her, but fortunately I did. I just kept repeating that it could no longer be a topic of conversation between us, because I did not want to argue with her.